


submissive

by pear_tree



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Light D/s, M/M, heavy self-loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-23 18:53:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pear_tree/pseuds/pear_tree
Summary: “Um, wait,” Richard says, “what did you—what was the word that you just used?”





	submissive

“Um, wait,” Richard says, “what did you—what was the word that you just used?”

Jared looks surprised. “Which word? Oh, your mildly submissive tendencies.”

Richard flinches. He’d been feeling calm, sitting sideways on Jared’s lap on the couch and twisted around to face Jared so that they can make out, Jared’s hand resting on his lower back. (It’s not the most comfortable position, but—to be honest—Richard likes the feeling of being curled up and contained, and the fact that Jared’s got several inches on him works in his favor in this case.) Jared had been telling him about how the women’s crew team at Vassar used to watch _Buffy_ together, and Richard had said something about how he’d sort of had a thing for Buffy when he was a teenager, and now Jared’s said this thing about him. “Uh, what do you mean by that?”

“I’m sorry—”

“No, no, don’t be sorry.”

“I was just teasing you,” Jared says. “I mean, I know it’s a pretty tenuous connection at best, and you know I wasn’t trying to trivialize your sexuality. And it’s not like I don’t see the appeal.” Jared smiles. “I mean, Buffy was such a decisive leader. And I say that as someone who kind of preferred Xena, to be honest.”

Richard rubs his face. He loves Jared’s weird sincerity, and he loves Jared, and that helps take the edge off the rising anxiety he’s having about this conversation. “No, it’s fine. I just—do you actually think that about me?”

“Well, I didn’t mean it in general, of course. I just mean when you’re with me.” Jared’s mouth quirks. “In bed.”

“Right,” Richard says. Jared’s hand slides over his hip, a little possessively. Richard bites his lip for a second. His head swims. “Uh, could you be more specific?”

Jared looks like he’s been caught off-guard. “Well,” he says after a pause, “I suppose this involves some presumptuousness on my part about what you were thinking.” He smiles. “But…I think you like following directions, and I think you like it when I take certain liberties with you.”

Richard opens his mouth, makes an inarticulate sound, and closes it.

“And I think you like to beg,” Jared finishes.

Richard takes a breath. “Okay, wow,” he says, and gets off Jared to sit on the couch normally. Jared nudges him, and Richard lets Jared put an arm around his shoulders. “That’s, uh—do you really think so? I mean, that’s not really how I think of myself. Is that, like…” An S&M thing? Something about gay sex in particular or sex in general that nobody ever bothered to tell him about? He doesn’t actually know how to finish that sentence in a productive way, so he just makes a hand gesture indicating nothing in particular and moves on. “Okay, first of all, I feel like the ‘following directions’ thing is just, like, the most logical thing to do, right? Like, I have no idea what I’m doing a lot of the time, or at least I had no idea at first, so you have to tell me what to do. Well, you don’t _have_ to do anything, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s actually really, um, nice of you.” Richard feels himself flush, saying that. Both at what he’s referring to—it’s not like he can’t handle talking about sex, but this is a _weird_ conversation—and because, well, _nice_? “What was that second thing you said?”

“Richard.” Jared’s rubbing circles into his shoulder.

“And I didn’t think I was _begging_. I thought I was just asking politely, if we’re even talking about the same thing. Sorry, what?”

Jared leans closer and puts his other hand on Richard’s knee. “You don’t have to take my off-the-cuff comment to heart, Richard. You know I love the way you are.”

“Yeah,” Richard says. He wonders, for a second, whether he _does_ know that, considering that the “way he is” is being the kind of person who freaks out over his boyfriend teasing him. “I also, um—you too, obviously. Sorry for, like, freaking out about it. I know you were just joking.”

Jared kisses his hair. “I think you have some idea of what you’re doing,” he says. His hand moves higher on Richard’s thigh. “You’re quite good, actually. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“What—oh, that.” Richard smiles and ducks his head. Jared’s shifting on the couch so he can get better access to Richard, and in another second his mouth is on Richard’s earlobe, and Richard inhales sharply. At this point, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that this short conversation where he’d stumbled all over the place has turned him on, and that he has obviously been getting hard in his pants, as much as he’d been trying to ignore it. He can feel himself blushing so intensely that even his ears feel hot.

“Oh—oh, _fuck_ ,” he says, dragging out the last word as Jared’s mouth slides against his neck. He’s feeling twitchy and self-conscious, and Jared is dragging his brain in a different direction now, and he wants to give in. “Can I—” He gestures in the general direction of Jared, and Jared nods eagerly. He clambers on top of Jared, trying to do about five different things at once, until Jared, thankfully, gently guides him down onto his knees. Richard’s pretty sure he’s got it from there.

* * *

Late at night in the office, Richard opens up a new private browsing window, even though he knows that Google’s still tracking him based on his IP address and all it does is save him a click to clear his browsing history. Whatever. It doesn’t matter if Google is tracking him. The Pied Piper engineers probably Google all sorts of weird shit at work, too. Besides, he has nothing to be ashamed of, in theory. Not if Jared doesn’t.

* * *

The truth is that Richard’s not entirely sure what he brings to this relationship, sometimes. Of course he knows what Jared _says_ about him: He’s Jared’s captain, he’s handsome and beautiful, he’s brilliant and full of conviction. Richard’s gotten as far as believing that _Jared_ believes what he says, given how easily Jared says that stuff, with no strain or hesitation whatsoever. That’s something. For the most part, though, the gap between what Jared says and the reality Richard lives in seems so wide that Jared’s words just roll off of him. (Maybe he can cede the “brilliant” part. It’s what everyone’s been telling him for as long as he can remember. But he knows, maybe even better than most people, that it doesn’t exactly make him boyfriend material.)

Jared, obviously, is very competent and good at holding things together, and it makes Richard feel varying proportions of impressed, envious, motivated, madly in love, frustrated, full of pride, full of self-loathing, grateful, relieved, and turned on, depending on the context. Richard, in comparison, can’t seem to actually do anything, or at least do anything right. Case in point: He used to make jokes to Jared about this, back when they’d started dating a few months ago (e.g., “Come on, Jared, it’s pretty obvious that you’re the better half and I’m the worst half—I mean, just step outside of yourself for a second and look at me”), and Jared had always seemed quietly appalled at him, and it had still taken him a couple of iterations to take the hint.

Sex, though, is something he can sort of be good at. If he’s not pulling his weight overall, maybe he can partially make up for it by being good in bed (which is wishful thinking, in a way, because Jared’s also so much better than him in that department, but—whatever). The truth, if he’s being honest with himself, is that he likes the idea of Jared getting some actual use out of him, or maybe even enjoying or taking some pleasure from him. It might be a fucked-up way to think about sex and he’s afraid to examine it too closely, but it’s there. It is what it is. It’s bizarre to think of himself playing that role in anyone’s life or providing any of that to anyone, like he’s a sexy blow-up doll or something, when he can’t even make eye contact with strangers because he doesn’t want to see them looking at him and when he winces every time he accidentally looks at a reflective surface. He’s not delusional; he knows what he looks like. But the way that Jared looks at him makes him feel like…well, like the awful, scrawny body he inhabits that inconveniences him, humiliates him, and generally fucks him over in various ways large and small can bring some value to _someone_ , if not always to himself. He likes having Jared’s eyes on him. Sometimes he wishes Jared were the only person allowed to see him.

And it’s not like he’s not trying in other ways. Jared saying all that stuff about him makes him want to be better, so he can actually resemble the person Jared seems to think he is. He knows he’s a work in progress. The thing is, being less of an asshole and trying to keep it together is a lot more difficult than, say, giving a decent blowjob, and it’s one thing to hear Jared tell him he’s the most wonderful thing in Jared’s life, and another thing entirely to have Jared backing him up against a wall and asking him to get on his knees, Jared’s cock sliding into his throat as he teaches Richard how to breathe through it. It’s nice for Jared to just want him in such a straightforward way. It’s nice to not have to think about himself or his own fuck-ups for a while.

He has no idea how to even start talking about any of this with Jared. Maybe that’s fine, for now.

* * *

A few days after that, he’s making out with Jared in Jared’s bed. Jared has carefully, lovingly stripped Richard down to his boxers, though Jared himself is still wearing his pajamas. Richard is almost fully hard, at this point, and he feels a little too far gone considering that they’re just kissing. So far gone that when Jared pulls away for a second, he says, breathlessly, “Um, could I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever tied anyone up?”

Jared’s eyes are glazed over, but he refocuses after a second. “You mean, have I ever done it in a sexual context,” he says. Then he props himself up slightly. “Do you want me to do that to you?”

Maybe this had been a bad idea. Richard had asked in the heat of the moment, and this conversation seems more challenging now that they’ve cooled off for a minute. He considers just kissing Jared again so they don’t have to continue this conversation, but he thinks that’s probably not going to work. “Maybe,” he says, trying to shrug as best he can given that he’s lying down.

Actually, he realizes, pretending he’s indifferent is pretty stupid in this…sexual context. It’s obvious why he’s asking, and obvious that Jared wants to hear him say it.

“I might,” he says, trying to sound more sincere.

“Well, to answer your exact question, I have,” Jared says. “Tied people up, I mean.” Richard can hear the amused endearment in the way Jared quotes his own words back at him. Jared’s clearly pleased, as though he’s been secretly waiting for this to happen. Or maybe Richard’s just imagining it. Jared continues, “I’ve also been on the receiving end a few times, if that’s relevant, though I don’t like it as much. Sorry, I guess I should have asked you if _that’s_ what you meant.”

“No, no. It’s—it’s fine.”

“Alright.” Jared smiles at him. Richard could have picked a better way to ask this question, he realizes. Invoking Jared’s exes was probably not the strongest conversation starter. “Richard, I’d love to do that to you,” Jared says. Before Richard has a chance to process that, Jared continues, “Unfortunately, I’m afraid I don’t have any rope at home right now, and I’d prefer to not try to improvise, since I’m a little rusty and it would be your first time.”

Richard squirms, riding out a jolt of arousal and nervousness. Maybe it’s Jared saying _first time_ as though Richard were a blushing virgin, or maybe it’s Jared calmly and sensibly talking about logistics, or maybe it’s the shockingly vivid mental image he suddenly has of Jared looming over him, the way he’s doing now, while Richard’s tied up and ready underneath him. If Richard wasn’t certain he wanted this before, he’s pretty certain now. “Uh, yeah, sure,” he says. “So, how easy is it to, uh, buy rope? I’m just wondering. I didn’t mean, like, right now. I just don’t know anything about this stuff.”

“Oh, you can just order it online these days, although of course we can take as long as you want,” Jared says, and then bends down and kisses him. “Although you do seem a little impatient.”

Richard closes his eyes, embarrassed. He secretly sometimes likes it when Jared sees through him like this. Not always, but he’s kind of into it right now. “Well, you’re hot, so,” he says, deciding to just concede. This earns him a delighted laugh from Jared. “So sue me.”

“You’re very sweet,” Jared says. There’s more kissing, and Richard’s just starting to be satisfied with the amount of progress he’s made on this modest sexual goal when Jared says, “I have an idea, if you don’t mind.” He props himself back up. “Do you know what it is about being restrained that appeals to you? I was thinking, maybe we can work something out in the meantime that still gives you what you want.”

Oh, god. Maybe this is too embarrassing, past the bounds of what he can tolerate. He hadn’t signed on for self-reflection; truthfully, he’d been hoping that Jared would just get whatever they needed on Amazon or something, and that would be the end of it. There are—he reasons—normal, attractive, well-adjusted people out there who like to get tied up and called dirty things and follow orders during sex, so that stuff is within the acceptable range of things to do, and therefore it shouldn’t matter if Richard wants any of it for unwholesome or ominously indescribable reasons.

He realizes Jared had never asked him how he’d come up with this idea. Maybe Jared’s been monitoring network traffic. Or maybe he’d assumed that Richard generated the idea himself because of his…his submissive nature. Richard doesn’t want to continue this train of thought.

“You don’t have to,” Jared continues. “It’s alright if you don’t know. I mean, there’s always some irreducible, irrational core to it, and some people would tell you that all sexual kinks have their origins in the murky primordial soup of the developing mind. And if I tried to get to the bottom of all my motivations, well.” Jared shrugs and smiles in that way of his. “But I do think it would make it better for the both of us if you tried to explain a little more.”

This thing that Jared is doing, giving him an out while egging him on a little bit, is working. “Yeah, okay,” Richard says, after a few seconds. He’s bluffing a little, since he doesn’t actually know what he’s going to say. He settles back into the pillow and stares at the ceiling. Jared lies down beside him and holds his hand.

“Some people like to be tied down because they eroticize the feeling of being powerless,” Jared says, his voice mild.

“Uh, well,” Richard says. That’s not it, but it bears a close-enough resemblance to something Richard recognizes inside himself, and he feels himself wanting to clarify, which is the impulse that wins out. “Not powerless, necessarily, but.” He rubs his free hand over his face, and inside his head he gropes around for the words, trying to not get derailed by the arousal-shame combination that washes over him whenever he hits upon the right concepts. “I want to feel like I’m yours,” he starts, and— _wow_ , that was way too much, too soon, right out of the gate. But he’d meant it, and he knows it. Jared squeezes his hand but doesn’t say anything. “I mean, I know that I already am.” Richard’s not doing a great job of de-escalating, but maybe that’s not the right goal here. “But, um, I guess I want to feel like you can do whatever you want to me. Like I’m yours to…use, I guess?” Jared still doesn’t say anything. Richard groans and massages his closed eyelids. “Like it’s all about what _you_ want. I don’t know.” The arousal-shame is too much, at this point. Richard could probably actually have tolerated sober, rational self-reflection time in some other context, but this feels like it’s doubling as corny dirty talk, and he’s not sure if he can tolerate that.

Jared squeezes his hand again. “Go on,” he says, lightly. “I’m still here.”

Richard’s in too deep already. “There’s also the fact that I wouldn’t really have to do anything,” he continues, trying for some levity, but Jared makes a thoughtful sound at that, and it makes Richard feel embarrassed, like he’s just copped to being lazy. “What I meant by that was that—I don’t know. That just didn’t, uh, come out right. So to speak.” _(Richard, what is wrong with you?)_ “I just meant that there’d be less of a chance that I’d screw up and do a bad job. Like, if I couldn’t really do anything, and you could just—and then I couldn’t fuck anything up, right? Like I do with literally everything else?”

Richard takes a deep breath, and lets what he’s just said catch up with him. He sounds stuttery and high-strung, he realizes, in that way he hates. And he doesn’t know how Jared does it, dragging things out of him without him even realizing it. But his words are out there now, hanging in the air. He says, weakly, as at a last-ditch attempt at clarification, “I just want to make this good for you.”

He turns to look at Jared, who’s watching him intently.

“Richard, I didn’t know the extent of this,” Jared says. He props himself up again and starts stroking Richard’s arm, his face going through a series of small contortions, as though figuring out what to say.

Richard, for his part, feels emptied out, like he’s leaked his emotions all over the place for Jared to clean up. He doesn’t want Jared to look at him at this moment. The lights are on so they can have sex, which is kind of a non-negotiable thing for Jared, and Richard ordinarily doesn’t mind, but he feels way too visible right now.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know that was kind of fucked up, and I don’t know where it came from, and, oh, god, here I am doing it _again_ —”

“Doing what again?”

Richard flails his arm, the one Jared’s not holding. “You know, just the thing where I can’t make myself stop talking and saying things I didn’t mean. Which is funny, because awkward people like me are supposed to be shy, or whatever, but I guess I’m actually the even worse kind of awkward person who can’t shut the fuck up.” He’s doing it again. Right now, in that same terrible whiny nerd voice. It’s like the process is recursive.

Jared reaches over and cups Richard’s face in his hand. It’s nice. Sometimes when Richard gets too fucked up, he loses track of where parts of his own body are, but Jared touching him helps. “Did you say anything you didn’t mean?” Jared says.

“I don’t know.”

“Richard, are you this afraid of screwing up? Is that how you feel? I’m not talking about sex. I mean, to be clear, our sex life is really astonishingly good, and getting even better all the time, and I really couldn’t ask for anything else—”

“Jared, just—”

“Sorry, I’m getting distracted. The point is, you _know_ I’ve felt that way, too. That I was terrified that you were going to leave me. And you know that because I’ve told you, and you reassured me, and now I don’t feel that way nearly as often as I used to. Would you really have preferred that I just hadn’t told you?” The _as often_ part snags Richard’s mind.

“Well, if we’re both afraid of that, then it evens out, right?” Richard used to think that Jared just didn’t get his edgy self-deprecating jokes, but he’s since realized that Jared has just been declining to let himself get dragged down to Richard’s level. Richard’s been trying to break the habit, but this one just slipped out. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yeah, sorry, that was… But, yeah, no, of course not,” Richard says. “I mean, of course I wouldn’t have preferred that. I mean, if you still feel that way, you should just—” Richard sighs. A piece of the puzzle that is Jared Dunn slots into place for him: Jared being an open book, transparent sometimes to an uncomfortable degree, is a choice that Jared makes, not something that just happens.

It’s pretty bad that Jared has to spell all this out for him. But things can only get better from here.

Jared is silent for a few seconds, but he keeps stroking the side of Richard’s face, which makes it bearable. “Richard, I’m going to be perfectly blunt, and I’m hoping you’ll forgive me for it.” Jared takes a long breath in and out, and Richard braces himself. “I think you need to find a way to talk to me about what you’re thinking and feeling, and I don’t mean just about sex, but also about other things. About the two of us. And, to be excruciatingly honest once again, I don’t think you’ll do it for yourself, or else you’d have done it already.”

Richard winces. “Keep going,” he says, when Jared stops.

“Well, I was going to say. You can, uh.” Jared frowns. “I never really thought I’d say this, but you can do it for me, if that’s what it takes. I’ll always listen to you talk about how you’re feeling, even if the context is unusual, or it seems at first glance like you’re talking about something else, or what you’re saying is ridden with…with semi-intentional distractions, and declarations of self-loathing—”

“Okay, okay—”

“—but it doesn’t have to be this way.” Jared, finished with his speech, takes a breath. “And I think you know that.”

Richard covers his face with his hands, his fingers overlapping with Jared’s. He takes a few deep breaths.

“Right, okay,” he says, finally.

He can see what the shape is of what Jared’s suggesting, even if he hasn’t worked out the implementation details yet. He can do this. “I’ll try.”

“Let’s talk about this later,” Jared says. “I mean, I would prefer sooner rather than later, and I think you would, too. But we have some time.”

“What—right, of course,” Richard says.

Jared nods. Then, slowly, he gets on top of Richard and starts kissing him, and it’s fantastic, actually. It’s exactly what Richard wants right now, for Jared to put his tongue inside Richard’s mouth and shut him up, for Jared to be covering him with the weight and heat of his body. The only way this could be better is if he were on his stomach and burying his face in the pillow but somehow still kissing Jared at the same time. He could do this forever.

He makes a mental note to bring up the talk later, of his own volition; Jared will like that, and it’s not like Richard can hide from it. “Hey,” Richard says, when he gets a moment. “Could we turn off the lights?” He figures it’s fine, since they’re just kissing, and they’re probably going to go to sleep soon anyway.

“Oh,” Jared says, and actually looks sheepish. “I thought…never mind. That’s fine.” He gets off Richard and reaches to turn the light off.

“Oh, no,” Richard says, “wait.” He pulls Jared back on top of him. “If you want.” Seeing Jared’s hesitation, he says, “I want to.”

Jared pauses for a few seconds. His mouth twists. “I was thinking,” he says, completely matter-of-factly, “that maybe I could hold you down and fuck you right now.”

_Holy shit._ Richard takes a stuttery breath. His sexual responses have been scrambled up throughout this entire conversation, but now he’s unambiguously, painfully turned on. “Yeah, please do that,” he says, closing his eyes and nodding clumsily, already barely able to string those words together.

Jared takes one of Richard’s wrists and presses it down into the mattress at shoulder level, and Richard gasps and rolls his hips upward. Jared continues, “You’ll tell me if you want me to stop or if you need anything. How does that sound?”

“Yeah, do it, please, please—”

“I don’t want to spoil the mood, but it sounds to me like you’re begging,” Jared says, a pleased note in his voice, already reaching between them to pull Richard’s boxers down.

“I—do you _like_ that?”

“Yes, I do,” Jared says.

* * *

Jared orders rope, and a few other things, from Amazon. (“Things were so different ten years ago,” he says offhandedly.)

Richard’s a programmer, so he’s probably in the 99th percentile of being able to appreciate technical expertise and attention to detail in other people. So, obviously, it’s incredibly impressive and hot that Jared is some kind of bondage expert, despite that one time he claimed to be rusty at it. Whenever he tells Jared this in the middle of Jared tying him up, Jared blushes and stutters in that way he does when he’s turned on but trying valiantly to focus on something else, so Richard tries to say some variant of this as often as is reasonable.

Before all that, though, Richard sits Jared down for a talk. He’s determined to do this thing for Jared, which really isn’t so much to ask, _before_ Jared gives him what he wants. This does mean that they have to have this conversation within the Amazon Prime two-day delivery window, which is a pretty extreme constraint given that they’re both busy people, but Richard manages to do it. Talking about himself—without just making stupid jokes—feels strange and awful, actually, not romantic or wonderful or transformative. He’s still the same sort-of-shitty person he was when he started out, and Jared doesn’t lay hands on him and make him all better. Jared also doesn’t keep a running stream of cheerful rebuttals in response to Richard’s descriptions of what’s going on in his head, which is honestly a relief. All in all, it’s better than forcing Jared to guess or to prod at him with his emotional feelers. And, Richard thinks, maybe someday he’ll get better at it. After all, they have some time.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, SV fandom! I was in the middle of writing a longer thing that was serious and sad, but then this crept up on me out of nowhere ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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